Scharp Communication and Design takes cognizance of the importance of protecting your personal information and as such subscribes to the principles, outlined in Section 51 of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act 2002, that governs your right to privacy of your personally identifiable information, as well as the Protection of Personal Information Act, 4 of 2013 (POPIA), which gives effect to the constitutional right to data privacy in terms of Section 14 of the Bill of Rights of the Constitution.
POPIA deals with your constitutional right to privacy and the right to access of information. This includes how and why we collect, process, share, store and access information.
This Privacy policy relates to the collection and use of personal information you may supply to us through your use of any of our service channels and such policy therefore governs the manner in which your personal information will be dealt with.
Last updated: 30 June 2021
This Policy sets out the responsibilities and obligations of all persons who use, access or receive any form of information and communication from Scharp Communication via its electronic communication facilities and resources. This includes the Scharp websites (www.scharp.co.za and www.scharpdigital.co.za), email, online and remote workshops and social media platforms. This policy also sets out how all users of these facilities and resources are to ensure that when using these resources that they respect and process another’s Personal Information lawfully and in accordance with the provisions of POPIA.
IMPORTANT: PLEASE READ THIS POLICY BEFORE YOU MAKE USE OF ANY OF SCHARP’s ELECTRONIC FACILITIES OR PROVIDE SCHARP WITH ANY PERSONAL INFORMATION. BY PROVIDING SCHARP WITH YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION, YOU CONSENT TO SCHARP PROCESSING YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION, WHICH WE UNDERTAKE TO PROCESS STRICTLY IN ACCORDANCE WITH THIS PRIVACY POLICY.
Scharp Communication defines personal information as all information specific to yourself, that is provided to us via our website or any other channel. This includes but is not limited to personal information that is provided to us in the course of our business, while obtaining an online quotation, registering for or attending an in-person, remote or online course, and asking questions via email or during requests.
This includes but is not limited to the following personal information that you may provide to us when using the website:
With your consent, Scharp may use your Personal Information to contact you with newsletters, marketing or promotional materials and other information that may be of interest to you. You may opt out of receiving any, or all, of these communications from us at any given time.
Scharp Communication has the highest regard for the privacy of its customers and will use personal information only to the extent required in the normal course of business and to provide the products and services you have requested.
To effectively meet our clients’ communication, design and website development needs, and as required by legislation, we must collect and process certain personal information about you and/or your business to provide you with our services. However, this is only collected when the information is provided by you, or authorised to be obtained on your behalf.
Scharp has the highest regard for the privacy of its customers and will use personal information only to the extent required in the normal course of business and to provide the products and services agreed upon or request by you. Sources where we collect and store this information include:
Scharp will also use this information to positively identify you when you contact us.
We value the information that you choose to provide us and will therefore take reasonable steps to protect your personal information from loss, misuse or unauthorised alteration. The information we maintain concerning our customers is stored in databases that have built-in safeguards to ensure the privacy and confidentiality of that information.
We maintain physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards to guard your personal information. In doing so, we restrict access to your personal information to our employees who require the information to provide a service to you, as well as the support service companies mentioned above. Please rest assured that the institutions are also legally and contractually bound to maintain the privacy of the information shared with them.
You must always keep your personal information and any account numbers or login details secret and ensure that you do not disclose it to anyone.
Should you at any time feel that you no longer wish to be contacted by us, you should advise us to that effect in writing. We retain all data that is required for us to discharge our business activities for an indefinite period for historical, statistical and research purposes. We have established appropriate safeguards against the records being used for any other purposes.
Furthermore, all Scharp employees and third-party contractors are bound by confidentiality agreements, and we have policies in place to protect your information.
Scharp Communication does not and will not sell or provide personal information to third parties for independent use. We may, however, share personal information with our suppliers and business partners if that information is required to provide the product or service you have requested. However, our suppliers and business partners will adhere to using your information only as directed by Scharp.
If required to deliver our services, which includes providing quotations, communication-, design-, development- or advisory services, and communicating important information, we will share your personal information with other service providers.
The following list includes but is not limited to some of the instances when we disclose the personal information obtained from you:
We will not use your personal information to send you any information about services or offers from Scharp unless you explicitly give us consent to do so. However, we will send our clients communication relating to our service to them.
We may also collect information that your browser sends whenever you visit our Website or make use of our online service (“Log Data”). This Log Data may include information such as your computer’s Internet Protocol (“IP”) address, browser type, browser version, the pages of our website that you visit, the time and date of your visit, the time spent on those pages and other statistics.
In addition, we may use third party services such as Google Analytics that collect, monitor and analyze this type of information in order to increase our website’s functionality. These third-party service providers have their own privacy policies addressing how they use such information.
Cookies are files with small amounts of data, which may include an anonymous unique identifier. Cookies are sent to your browser from our website and stored on your computer’s hard drive.
We use “cookies” to collect information. You can instruct your browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent. However, if you do not accept cookies, you may not benefit from using some portions of the services on our website.
Please refer to our Cookie Policy here.
We employ third party companies and individuals to facilitate our service and manage our website. These third parties also provide some services on our behalf, perform service-related functions, and assist us in analysing how our website is used.
These third parties have access to your Personal Information only to perform these tasks on our behalf and are obligated not to disclose or use it for any other purpose.
When you link onto social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube or WhatsApp, which may house a reference to us, please note that these are not our platforms and that the use of these platforms will be subject to the relevant platform’ own privacy notices, and that we take no responsibility for your use of these platforms.
Where our website may contain links to third-party websites; if you follow these links, you will exit our website and the use of these websites will be subject to the relevant platform owners’ own privacy notices.
Where you respond to communication we post on third-party platforms, such as Facebook, Google and Twitter, such Personal Information may be shared with those third-party platforms for the purposes of providing you with targeted advertising via the relevant third-party platform based on your provided profile/interests. Refer to our Cookie policy for more details in this regard.
While these third-party websites are selected with care, Scharp Communication cannot accept liability for the use of your Personal Data by these organisations.
Our Service does not address anyone under the age of 18 (“Children”).
We do not knowingly collect personally identifiable information from children under 18. If you are a parent or guardian and you are aware that your Children has provided us with Personal Information, please contact us. If we become aware that we have collected Personal Information from a child under the age of 18 without verification of parental consent, we will take steps to remove that information from our servers.
Please ensure that you have read and understood the terms and conditions of this Privacy Policy before you provide us with your personal information.
We reserve the right in our sole discretion to amend this Privacy Policy from time to time. Save as expressly provided to the contrary in this Privacy Policy, the amended version of the Privacy Policy shall supersede and replace all previous versions thereof.